Schedule Helps Nn Clean Ditches

July 22, 2001|By FRED CARROLL Daily Press

Newport News resident Jim Monahan figured he had two choices as 3-foot-high floodwaters dumped by Hurricane Floyd seeped out of his Windsor Great Park home: apply for a second mortgage or file for bankruptcy.

He borrowed $60,000 and still has repairs to finish nearly two years later.

Thousands of residents across the Peninsula never worried about flooding until September 1999, when Hurricane Floyd drowned the Peninsula. Now, many watch with a wary eye when more than a few inches of rain fall.

Before Floyd's waters receded, state and local government officials pledged to make changes, even as they pointed out that nothing could have bridled the record rains.

In Newport News, city officials have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants and engineers to help the neighborhoods hardest hit by flooding.

Perhaps no change, though, could have a greater impact citywide than a renewed effort to upgrade and maintain the city's existing system of ditches and drainage pipes.

But try selling such a claim to residents, like Monahan, who blame overflowing ditches for large debts, continued repairs and sleepless nights.

"During the next tropical storm that comes through here," Monahan said, "it will come up, and we will have a problem."

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James Koontz, who oversees the city's wastewater division, hopes to ease such worries and doubts.

To understand Koontz, consider this: He repeatedly apologizes for getting excited when talking about the more than 160 miles of ditches that snake across Newport News.

He's the kind of guy who can stand in the middle of a road on a sweltering afternoon and actually say, "Now that's a good ditch. If you're a ditch connoisseur."

He says it so convincingly you find yourself turning to admire ... a ditch.

As wastewater administrator, Koontz rids the city of rats, mosquitoes and the flotsam of flushed toilets.

He also makes sure -- as much as possible with a drainage system piecemealed over a century -- that the city's ditches carry away runoff water faster than it pours in.

City-maintained ditches are everywhere.

A ditch might be nothing more than a grassy swale beside a Denbigh church. Or it might be a U- shaped strip of concrete dug in behind houses in the Beaconsdale area.

Such ditches dump into larger, stagnate brooks, which spill into mostly dry creek beds or concrete spillways, which eventually pour into the James River.

Koontz and his right-hand ditch man, Eddie Crockett, took on the job of cleaning and repairing Newport News' ditches months after Hurricane Floyd hit.

They didn't know what they were getting into, literally.

Before Floyd, the city didn't track how many miles of ditches it was supposed to maintain.

When the city did clean ditches, the work happened mostly after a resident called to complain that the city hadn't mowed an overgrown ditch in several months.

That has changed.

With the help of other city departments, crews working for Koontz and Crockett measured all the city ditches they could find and cataloged them on a computer spreadsheet.

Then they cleaned every ditch to the side or behind houses and businesses across the city.

They finished three months later.

And started again. An endless cycle of mowing, shoveling and bagging.

Crews found ditches choked with silt, perhaps untended for decades. They found ditches used as personal garbage disposals. They found ditches straddled by privacy fences.

Each a potential flood hazard.

Say, for example, a tree branch lodges against a fence built over a ditch. Other debris soon clogs around the branch. Water with nowhere to go backs up and floods yards.

City officials blamed a wayward cable spool for blocking a drainage pipe during Hurricane Floyd and contributing to massive flooding at three Denbigh apartment and condominium complexes.

Those residents have filed a class-action lawsuit against the city, saying it didn't do enough to ensure an adequate drainage system. The city denies any wrongdoing.

Koontz and Crockett are now trying to decide what's the best way to regularly clean roadside ditches, as well as the larger ditches that carry storm water to the James River.

Koontz knows he can't eliminate all flooding problems simply by cleaning ditches and bolting bar screens in front of drainage pipes, but he hopes to lessen the odds of such incidents in the future.

"I'm not going to say the system is great," he said, "but it's getting better."

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Windsor Great Park resident Monahan certainly hopes so.

He has written "H.F." in black marker on a pipe just below his electric meter and about halfway up a shed door.

"H.F." stands for Hurricane Floyd. The initials mark how high floodwaters stood on Monahan's property when a ditch beside his house overflowed.

Since Floyd, the city has spent about $3,500 building up the banks of that ditch. Workers hauled in rocks to fortify the banks. They bolted a grate in front of twin concrete drainage pipes to reduce the chances of blockage.